The Electra was chartered as a Military Airlift Command contract flight. The aircraft departed Monterey, CA, enroute to Columbus, GA, with a fuel stop in Ardmore. The airplane crashed while on approach, killing 83 people. Only 15 passengers survived. It was determined that the pilot (the company president) had suffered a heart attack.

Flight 327 was being operated on scheduled service between Providence, RI, and Tulsa, OK with intermediate stops in Chicago, IL, St. Louis, Springfield, and Joplin, MO. The flight was delayed 1 hour 40 min before it departed Chicago due to a faulty fire-warning system. The aircraft crashed 3.6 miles from the approach end of Tulsa Municipal Airport's runway 17L during an instrument approach. Of the three crew and seven passengers, one passenger sustained fatal injuries.

Boeing B-47E Stratojet 53-2091 24 May 1957Into the Canadian River, 17 miles south of Arnett, Oklahoma

The accident aircraft was being ferried to its home at Davis Monthan AFB, AZ, from IRAN at the Douglas Modification Center in Tulsa, OK, when instrument conditions were encountered in western Oklahoma. The Aircraft Commander reported a double failure of the vertical gyros, and ordered the crew to abandon when the aircraft became uncontrollable. The aircraft crashed into the north bank of the Canadian River just east of the US Highway 283 bridge. The copilot, 1LT Robert A. McIsaac, did not survive the ejection.

The aircraft exploded in-flight while being operated by a civilian crew from the Boeing test base at Wichita, Kansas. Pilot Ross B. Patrick, co-pilot Charles P. Craven, and navigator John W. McCort were killed. Boeing was not able to determine definitively the primary cause of the accident, but was able to confirm an AC power loss at the beginning of the maneuver.

Great Salt Plains Bombing RangeJet, Oklahoma

DoD began use of the range in 1941, for practice bombing and machine gun strafing. A gunnery range, landing strip, observation towers, and wooden building structures were constructed at the site. The site, about 18,000 acres, was relinquished back to the Department of the Interior in 1948. The site is currently used as a wildlife refuge and flood plain for the Great Salt Plains reservoir. In addition to the gunnery and bombing areas, two areas are described as having the remains of aircraft wreckage. Local residents indicate that military aircraft may have crashed and sank into the sands at the Salt Plains.

Douglas DC-2 NC14274 14 January 1936Near Goodwin, Arkansas

The aircraft was being operated by American Airlines as Trip One, from Newark, NJ, to Fort Worth, TX, with a crew change in Memphis, TN. The airplane was on course from Memphis to Little Rock, AR, with no indication of abnormality, when it crashed into a swampy area four miles from the town of Goodwin, AR. There were no survivors among the 14 passengers and three crew members. While there was no post-crash fire, a flash bulb from a photographers camera did ignite gasoline that had spilled. The cause of the crash was never proven, due in part to the fire and the extensive looting of the site by local residents. This was the first fatal commercial aircraft accident in the state of Arkansas, and remains to this date the worst crash.

North American F-51D Mustang 44-84973Consolidated B-36D Peacemaker 49-265827 April 1951 Near Carney, Oklahoma

After making a simulated bombing run on the capitol building in Oklahoma City, the B-36 participated in a simulated intercept mission conducted by the 185th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (Oklahoma ANG). During one pass, the F-51 piloted by 1LT Fred W. Black collided with the bomber nearly head-on. The B-36 broke into three main sections, with the nose and tail sections separating from the center wing section. Lt Black was fatally injured, as were 13 of the seventeen crew aboard the Peacemaker.

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